Saturday, June 11, 2011

Happy 2nd Birthday, Vegan Daughter!

Today we celebrated Vegan Daughter's 2nd birthday with this Holly Hobbie cake. She doesn't actually have a Holly Hobbie doll, but she does have a bonnet that is very Hobbie-ish. Vegan Mom picked up the cake pan at the library and I pulled out this recipe for the cake batter. I used it once before for my Valentine's Day Edible Art and found it a little tough and chewy. I had to triple the recipe to fill the pan (the perfect amount) and played around a bit with the ingredients and amounts. I left out the flax (totally unnecessary, I think), upped the soy milk to 2.5 cups (for the triple recipe), the sugar to 1.5 cups, and the oil to 1/2 cup. The cake worked perfectly in the pan and took 50 mins to bake (I always find it tricky to bake in these pans so the entire cake is cooked). The final product was still a bit dense so I may concoct a recipe next time that is somewhere between this one and Isa's cupcake recipe.This cake also forced me to learn a new skill: making drop flowers. It took a few times to get it right, but I think I did pretty well in the end. The funky part is that you make the flowers on parchment then freeze, carefully transferring them to the cake when needed. Also, I did not have the proper leaf tip so I just shot some green icing around to get the same effect.